


Chameleon

by nenya_kanadka



Series: Emperor, Admiral [2]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Bad Decision Theatre Vol II: Post-Episode 1x14, Consensual Sex, F/F, Femslash February, Femslash February 2018, Impersonation, Masochism, Orgasm Delay, Power Struggle, Rough Sex, Sort Of, Uniform Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 18:41:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13642209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nenya_kanadka/pseuds/nenya_kanadka
Summary: There's something indefinablywrongin seeing Philippa's body in Philippa's clothing moving like the Emperor.(Spoilers for 1x14 The War Without, The War Within.Sequel toTerrible As An Army With Banners.)





	Chameleon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rivendellrose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivendellrose/gifts).



> Because of Michelle Yeoh's face, and [Pixie (magnetgirl)](http://archiveofourown.org/users/magnetgirl/pseuds/Pixie)'s [Kat meta last week](http://pixiedane.tumblr.com/post/170549464223/tldr-give-katrina-a-hug-give-jayne-an): _She’s lost so much and everything she gets back is twisted_. Dedicated to Transporter Tech 1 and the many secrets he carries.

Georgiou came to her this time, Kat reminds herself in the morning. It is her only excuse, and it holds less water than her cupped hands. She splashes water on her face in front of the mirror and thinks, _we are all so screwed_. 

(How can she claim that she took the Terran Emperor to bed not because she looked so much like Philippa in that uniform, but despite it? All her years of helping other people walk through the valley of the shadow don't keep her from simultaneously torturing herself with the face of her beloved and seeking solace in the way this Philippa's sharp edges keep her from dropping her guard.)

She can't get the scent of her out of her mind. Leather and sweat and copper, danger and sex, Philippa and the monster, and the way the monster touched her. So she lies in the dark and digs her nails into her own skin and drags up the Emperor's face instead of Owosekun's voice reporting negative Federation life signs. She makes herself come three times thinking of the way the wrong Philippa says "Katrina." She's drinking Gabriel's whisky when Michael Burnham comes to the door, and she pretends like hell that she's been woken up. 

Later, she hands a brand-new captain's uniform to the woman in leather, and says "Get dressed," as brusquely as she can manage. She gets a mirthless smirk in return, and Georgiou doesn't even ask her to leave while she changes. Doesn't bother to turn her back, just strips down to what is absolutely _not_ regulation Starfleet underwear and puts Philippa's uniform on. Kat hands her a hairbrush and a holo of Philippa and walks out, then, because her hands are shaking with the urge to brush that awful stick-straight hair into the soft waves she knows so well. She wonders later if that's what gave her away.

She will never forget the smile on Keyla Detmer's face when she announces Captain Georgiou. It lodges like ice-cold shrapnel under her breastbone, and she has to swallow against nausea. 

So when Georgiou shows up at her door after beta shift, Kat almost doesn't let her in. She's been to the ship's gym so she doesn't have to think; she's sweating and her hair's sticking to her face and this is the last thing she needs. But the Emperor has timed her arrival perfectly. There's a young officer with beautiful hair walking past as Kat opens the door, and Georgiou gives him a benevolent nod that lasts just long enough that it will be obvious if Admiral Cornwell throws the heroically returned Captain Georgiou out. 

Kat straightens her tank top and stands back from the door. She flings her arm out in a _Come on in, then, why don't you,_ gesture and bites her tongue.

The sweet smile slides off Georgiou's face as soon as she's inside. Her open posture tightens up and there's suddenly an extra swagger in her hips. Kat had associated it with those damn leather pants, and there's something indefinably _wrong_ in seeing Philippa's body in Philippa's clothing moving like the Emperor. 

She stalks around the room like it's actually Kat's quarters (Kat hasn't had permanent quarters in months) with sentimental objects she could pick up and arrogantly examine. It's a power move so old it has space mushrooms growing on it, and it still puts Kat on the defensive. 

"It must be so hard for you, trying to pretend to be a decent human being." It slips out before Kat can stop herself. She crosses her arms in front of her chest where she stands by the door, hoping she looks bored instead of edgy and unwillingly aroused. 

The Emperor looks up from where she's been running her fingers along the edge of the desk. She drags her eyes haughtily up and down Kat's body, her damp tank top and exercise pants. " _I_ am the only true heir of Earth aboard this ship." 

"Like hell." 

The Emperor snorts. "You've diluted yourselves with alien weakness for so long that you've forgotten what it means to be Terran." She reaches for the half-empty whisky bottle without asking permission and starts to pour a glass. 

"That's your traitor's booze, you know," Kat says with a jerk of her chin. The Emperor doesn't even pause, just tips the glass back and swallows, and Kat is not watching the cool column of her throat and not thinking of how she'd taste right now. 

Georgiou turns the glass in her hand. She tilts her head, a little smile hovering at her lips. "You never told me, Katrina, that you loved your Captain Georgiou." 

Kat sucks in air through her nose. "No. I didn't."

"It must be so difficult for you, trying to pretend that I am her." She mimics Kat's intonation, and then she smiles. The hard lines of her face melt like quicksilver into something almost, but not quite, Philippa, and Kat's heart lurches. 

"Do you want me to be sweet?" The smile turns sunny. Her shoulders drop, and her hair slides softly across her uniform's rank bars as she turns her head. "Noble?" The smile stays fixed, but her eyes turn mocking. "With _you_ , Katrina?" 

Kat swallows. She forces herself to flick a dismissive glance from Georgiou's unnerving face down over her smart uniform and back again. "I don't especially love lying to them." Stay angry, Katrina. Watch her face. Could you tell, right now, if Philippa walked in, which one of them was which? 

The chameleon face shifts again. She toasts Kat with the empty whisky glass. "Such good your vaunted Starfleet principles have done you." The sneer is at odds with the soft drift of hair at her temples, the inch or two of undone zipper at her throat. 

Kat feels her chin come up. No. Not over the unburied dead of Starbase One. "They've given us peace for a hundred years." 

In the moment that Georgiou doesn't follow up her sally with a reminder of how pulverized galactic peace is right now, Kat takes the opportunity to move away from the door and claim some space in her own borrowed quarters. She has some vague idea of finding her uniform jacket and throwing it on over her undershirt. She wonders why Georgiou's not speaking. Until she does.

"They couldn't save the woman you love." 

It's a kick to the chest, and Kat's fingers dig into her folded arms to hide her reaction. Starfleet principles had nothing to do with T'Kuvma's knife, or with Michael Burnham thinking she knew more about Klingons than she did. "No," Kat says. "You don't get to talk about Philippa." 

That was a slip—using her name. Georgiou's voice drops to that smoky register Kat hasn't been able to forget. She stands there like a caesar on a monument. "I _am_ Philippa." 

Kat makes herself snort, even though her nails are leaving small painful bruises on her forearms. "At the risk of repeating myself: like hell." 

Georgiou's teeth show in her smile. Kat might as well have admitted she's bleeding out emotionally on the floor in front of her. 

"No," Kat says again. She holds up her hand against whatever Georgiou's going to say next. There's tension in her shoulders and all down her spine. "You try, your imperialness, and you're extraordinary. Sometimes out of the corner of my eye I think I see her for a moment. But you have no idea who Philippa Georgiou really was." 

The Emperor cocks her head. Watching, always watching. "Then tell me." The smile slides again, slowly enough that Kat is forced to watch the false concern overlay the shark teeth. It's almost, almost good enough. A stranger might be taken in. Even her crew. "Make your lie better." 

God. Kat remembers a time when she could think of Philippa's face and not see this one superimposed on it. She used to be able to see Philippa smile and not have to watch for the dagger in her eyes. She's lost so much, and this won't even rate the casualty lists. 

"Burnham's not keeping her mouth shut," she says. "We know how you treated your own." Suddenly she can't keep still. "I don't like lying to my people because I am responsible for them. Every soul on this ship is in my hands as long as I'm in command here." And more than just this ship. There are fewer of them left in Starfleet command with every passing hour. And the missing, the unaccounted for—Afsaneh Farzan was supposed to have been on Starbase One; Chris Pike still hasn't checked in. The weight on those left behind gets heavier. "I have a duty and I'll perform it until the last breath I take. Because they're _mine_." Kat's pacing now, her hands moving through the air, and she's betraying so, so much of herself. She has to stop. "—And that was Philippa. And I could tell you all day and you would never understand." 

She's lost so much, and everything she gets back is twisted. 

"The world ends." Georgiou's voice is cyanide-laced honey. "We outlast it. I _don't understand_? I have held worlds in my hand. I have lost those I love, and been given these insipid copies in their place." 

It's so close to what Kat was thinking that it's an effort to remember that she's being played. The Emperor takes another step into her space. "Be careful, Katrina. You'll make me care about you." 

Kat's breath is shaky. A moment ago she wanted to strike this woman for being Philippa Georgiou. Now, when the Emperor's hand comes up to caress her cheek, it's a struggle not to lean into it. 

"Extraordinary." Again with Kat's intonation of the word, the softness of Philippa's smile. Georgiou's thumb strokes over her lips. "You could bend them all to your will, Katrina, if you were a little less afraid." Her breath whispers across her skin. "Or a little more." 

Kat wants to say _I'm not afraid,_ but the words stick in her throat. She remembers, once, not living every waking moment with dull terror throbbing at the base of her skull. When was that? Who was she?

She lashes out and she grabs Georgiou by both wrists, pulling them away from her. She doesn't want gentleness and ashes. If she has to see this face and know it's not Philippa, she wants fire and ice and blood. 

The Emperor's eyes glitter and for a heartbeat she doesn't resist. Then she steps so close they're sharing air, and between one breath and the next she's twisted out of Kat's grip and reversed it. Steel-hard fingers close around Kat's wrists and with a sudden sharp jerk Georgiou pulls Kat in her thin black undershirt flush against the Emperor's blue and gold uniform. 

It's worse than the black leather and the armour. Because now Kat can feel the heat of her body and see the pulse in her throat, and she knows exactly how to move so she's pressed up between the Emperor's thighs, letting her grind just _there_ the way she knows Philippa likes best. Can drive a half-heard gasp from her throat and see her eyes darken for one breathless instant before the monster comes roaring back. 

And then Kat's ears are ringing as the Emperor's hand cracks across her face. She yanks Kat's head back by the hair, and Kat is stumbling, falling, hitting the floor on her knees. The fist in her hair is all that's holding her up, and Georgiou bends over her, furious at her insolence. 

Her voice is low and hard and has blessedly none of Philippa in it. "You've been lying to me, Katrina." 

Kat spits hair out of her mouth, tasting copper. "No." 

The hand in her hair pulls cruelly tight, a hot, perfect stab of pleasure. "You can make your crew believe you want your Captain Georgiou back from the dead. But she had no idea what to do with you." 

Leather and heat and fear, coming so hard to her own touch afterwards, _this_ face in her dreams—

"I know," the Emperor says, "Admiral." Her tongue curls around the title, turning it into a temptation, into a conquest. "How beautiful you've always looked, naked and on your knees for me. And I know how _you_ look, with my name on your lips and lust in your eyes."

"No," Kat breathes, but she can almost feel Georgiou's fingers pressing into her, filling up the empty dark with fire, fire, fire. She is soaking wet. 

"Tell me what you want," says the angel of death with her lover's face, "and I will give it to you." 

_Bring her back. Bring them all back,_ she screams inside her head, and she drags air into her lungs like life support is failing. "Get that goddamned uniform off." 

Georgiou bares her teeth, but the speed with which she strips out of Philippa's captain's uniform is almost frightening. And then she's pulling Kat to her feet and flinging her across the bed, and Kat has no illusions that she's less dangerous naked. 

Kat is grinding up against her almost before her back hits the rumpled sheets. Georgiou sinks her teeth into her neck and Kat knows it's meant to show tomorrow. She squirms out of her pants and grabs Georgiou's hand and pushes it against herself, and Georgiou gives two or three delicious thrusts before pulling back with a mocking smile. She drags Kat's undershirt and bra down off her shoulders and her mouth is hot and sweet and her fingers are beautiful and cruel. Kat arches her hips and tries to flip them over, but only succeeds in giving Georgiou something to rub against as she drives Kat completely and utterly insane. 

She drives the heel of her own hand against her clit and Georgiou slaps her hand away. "Tell me what you want," she says again, and this time it's a growl, " _and I will give it to you_." 

"Fuck," Kat pants, because there is no way in hell she's going to beg. She gets her hand between her own thigh and the wet slick of Georgiou's body and pushes up inside her. It gains her a sharp intake of breath and a hard bite to her shoulder and a hot surge of triumph, so she does it again and again until Georgiou digs her nails into Kat's arms one last time and rolls off her. 

Georgiou's hair is coming out of Philippa's ponytail and her chest is heaving, and for a long sweet painful moment Kat's back before the war and this is the _Shenzhou_ and Philippa's about to tease her about _attention to detail in the lower ranks, Admiral Cornwell_.

And then the Emperor comes back into Georgiou's face and she sits back up, and Kat thinks _does she ever rest?_ and then she's being rolled onto her hands and knees, her face shoved into the pillows and the other woman's hands on her hips, between her thighs. "Tell me," Georgiou says in her ear, "Katrina," and Kat shakes her head furiously against the pillows. She is wet and aching and _on fire_ and she still knows a bargain with the devil when she hears one. 

Georgiou slides one finger through her lower lips, then pinches her hard on the inside of her thigh. Kat cries out. Nails across her lower belly. Another bruising pinch to the soft skin of her thigh. A hand hovering so close to her cunt she can taste it in the back of her throat. 

"Please," she gasps, and it won't be enough, Georgiou won't accept it, but she can't give her more, and this will go on and on until she loses her mind and—

—and Georgiou's hand is _there_ , perfectly, wonderfully, fantastically hard where she's soft, strong where she's wet, and she doesn't stop when Kat comes sobbing into the pillows. Just slows down a little and builds the tension back up again in the way only her oldest lovers know how, and the second climax is ruthless and brighter than the sun. 

And for a blessed, blissful, beautiful while Kat's mind is nothing but a grey warm haze. 

When she finally rolls over, Georgiou is standing over her in Philippa's captain's uniform. Her cheeks are slightly flushed and she's doing up her zipper. Anyone would think she'd had a nice quiet romantic evening with an old lover and a little wine. She says, "My Katrina would be proud. In less than three days, you've fucked a prisoner _and_ a junior officer recently presumed dead." 

And Kat, god help her, lifts her head off the pillow enough to murmur, "You want the passive voice there," and scrub her hand across her face, because _fucked by_ is a lot more what it felt like. 

And Georgiou actually laughs. It startles Kat so much that she doesn't get out the _this can't happen again_ that would otherwise turn her into the world's biggest cliche.

The door swishes open. Kat hears Georgiou in the corridor: the cheerful, benign, crisp captain's voice. "Technician. Good morning. I trust you slept well?" By the end of the sentence, she's just about managed to sound warm, and even Kat is half-convinced by the imitation.

Kat splashes water on her face in front of the mirror and thinks, _we are all_ so _screwed_. She leans on the counter for a moment, then straightens up and tugs her uniform jacket on. The marks of Georgiou's teeth sting just under her collar as she steps away from the mirror.

They are probably all going to die, but there is so much to do first.

**Author's Note:**

> (Afsaneh Farzan is the [Commodore Paris in the Discovery-verse](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/commodore_paris_in_the_discovery_verse) crew's given/maiden name for Shohreh Aghdashloo's [Commodore Paris](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Paris_\(Commodore\)). She's not dead here, Kat just doesn't know what's happened to her.)
> 
> If you haven't seen it yet there is now [this amazing fanart](http://nenya-kanadka.tumblr.com/post/176294898770/bohgeyboss-two-character-full-colour-commission) by bohgeyboss!


End file.
